Attitudinal Changes Toward Body-Worn Cameras: Perceptions of Cameras, Organizational Justice, and Procedural Justice Among Volunteer and Mandated Officers

• Author: Jessica Huff,Charles M. Katz,Vincent J. Webb,E. C. Hedberg
• Date: 01 December 2020
• Published date: 01 December 2020
• DOI: 10.1177/1098611120928306
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Attitudinal Changes

Toward Body-Worn

Cameras: Perceptions

of Cameras,

Organizational Justice,

and Procedural Justice

Among Volunteer and

Mandated Officers

Jessica Huff

1

, Charles M. Katz

1

,

Vincent J. Webb

1

, and E. C. Hedberg

2

Abstract

Little is known about officer perceptions of body-worn cameras (BWCs), and

whether perceptions change following implementation within their agencies. BWC

deployment varies, with some agencies mandating officers to wear BWCs and others

using volunteers. Researchers have yet to assess attitudinal differences between

volunteers and mandated officers. This study addresses these gaps using data from

an evaluation of BWCs in the Phoenix Police Department to examine officer per-

ceptions of the utility of BWCs, perceptions of organizational justice, and support

for using procedural justice. We use inverse propensity weighted difference-in-

difference models to examine changes in officer perceptions over time between

randomly selected officers who were mandated to wear a BWC, BWC volunteers,

officers who resisted BWCs, and control officers. We identified limited significant

1

Center for Violence Prevention and Community Safety, School of Criminology and Criminal Justice,

Arizona State University, Phoenix, AZ, United States

2

NORC at the University of Chicago, Boston, MA, United States

Corresponding Author:

Jessica Huff, Center for Violence Prevention and Community Safety, School of Criminology and Criminal

Justice, Arizona State University, 411 N. Central Ave, Suite 680, Phoenix, AZ 85004, United States.

Email: Jessica.L.Huff@asu.edu

Police Quarterly

2020, Vol. 23(4) 547–588

!The Author(s) 2020

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DOI: 10.1177/1098611120928306

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differences in perceptions of BWCs over time, though effect sizes suggest that BWC

volunteers and mandated officers were more subdued in their expectations about

BWCs at the posttest.

Keywords

body-worn cameras, police attitudes, organizational justice, procedural justice

Despite the widespread expansion of body-worn camera (BWC) programs in

police agencies throughout the United States, research examining officer atti-

tudes toward this technology is relatively limited. Much of the extant research in

this area examines officer attitudes using cross-sectional methodologies, report-

ing findings from data collected at one time period only. This is an important

limitation given the inability of these studies to assess change in perceptions over

time as officers gain experience using BWCs. Those studies that have used pre-

test–posttest designs have largely found that officers become more favorable

toward BWCs in the posttest period (Gaub et al., 2016; Lum et al., 2019).

Many of the studies reporting changes in officer attitudes toward BWCs over

time use survey data collected as part of larger evaluations of BWCs (Lum et al.,

2019). These evaluations use different methodologies for deploying BWCs, with

some using randomly selected officers who were mandated to wear a BWC (e.g.,

White et al., 2018) and others using randomly selected officers who volunteered

to wear a BWC (e.g., Braga et al., 2017 who used volunteers to avoid potential

issiues with the police union). The technology required to support BWCs can

limit the scope of an evaluation. For example, researchers in Las Vegas were

required to reduce the number of area commands eligible for their study because

they needed to have sufficient docking stations to charge the BWCs and to

upload BWC footage (Sousa et al., 2016). As such, it is not always possible

or practical to examine the impact of BWCs using all officers employed by an

agency. This variation in the approaches used to deploy BWCs prevents a direct

comparison of perceptions of BWCs between officers who volunteer to wear a

camera and those who are mandated to do so. Given that officers who volun-

tarily wear BWCs could differ from those who are required to wear BWCs by

their agency, it is important to examine whether the way an officer was assigned

a BWC (voluntarily or mandated) impacts officer perceptions of the technology

over time.

In addition to potential differences in officer perceptions of BWCs them-

selves, the ways these officers rate organizational justice within their agency

and their support for the use of procedural justice when interacting with citizens

could also differ based on how BWCs are assigned to officers. For instance,

548 Police Quarterly 23(4)

being mandated to wear BWCs without the option to decline could impact

officers’ perceptions of fairness within their agency differently than officers

who choose to wear a BWC as part of an evaluation. Furthermore, the percep-

tions of officers who wear BWCs could change in different ways compared with

officers who did not wear a BWC. Those officers who wear a BWC have direct

experience using the technology, while those who do not wear a BWC might

only hear about BWCs from their fellow officers who are wearing BWCs. As

such, officers who do not personally wear BWCs could have unique and differ-

ent attitudinal changes toward BWCs due to informal conversations with offi-

cers who do wear BWCs or due to responding to the same incidents as BWC

officers.

However, there is an important distinction between officers who wear and

operate BWCs and those officers who do not wear the technology and who only

experience being recorded by other officers using BWCs. As such, officers who

use BWCs could have different or more notable changes in their perceptions of

BWCs than officers who do not use BWCs directly. Expanding the body of

research on officer perceptions of BWCs has important implications for police

agencies adopting BWCs. As the use and impact of BWCs has been tied to

officer receptivity to this technology (Maskaly et al., 2017; Stratton et al.,

2015), understanding officer attitudes toward BWCs is important for the suc-

cessful implementation and use of BWCs.

This study addresses gaps in the police attitudes toward BWCs research using

data collected as part of a larger randomized-controlled trial of BWCs in the

Phoenix Police Department (PPD). Although the Phoenix BWC evaluation was

originally designed to assign BWCs to randomly selected officers who agreed to

volunteer to wear a BWC as part of a federally sponsored project, pressure to

quickly deploy BWCs resulted in some officers being randomly selected and

mandated to wear a BWC without the option to decline. Through the original

BWC assignment process, those officers who were asked to volunteer and

declined were not assigned a BWC and are referred to as resistors. Randomly

selected officers who were not asked to volunteer to wear a BWC and did not

wear a BWC during the study are used as a control group. Officers in each of the

study groups were surveyed 1 month prior to and 6 months after the deployment

of BWCs in Phoenix. These survey data are used to examine change in officer

perceptions of BWCs, organizational justice, and procedural justice from pre-

BWC deployment to postdeployment. We examine differences between officers

who volunteer to wear a BWC, those mandated to wear a BWC, resistors, and

control officers.

Literature Review

BWCs are a mechanism that can be used to monitor officer behaviors in indi-

vidual incidents; as a result, the influence of BWCs on officer attitudes toward

Huff et al. 549